five portraits
by Cesario21
Summary: The Lisbon sisters, at 200 words apiece.


Title: One Thousand Words

Author: Branwyn

Summary: a snapshot of each sister, 200 words apiece.

Notes: Do you have any idea how small a number 200 is?

Feedback: As hard as I worked on this one, I'm begging. _Flight–Cecilia_

She lived from one beautiful moment to the next. Ugliness warded away by ritual: incense, chimes, the pallid face of the Virgin.

But colored votive candles lost their charm every morning, when her mother's grey face emerged over the breakfast table. In daylight Cecilia rode her bicycle with no hands; and at night she tended her altars, searching for a charm to cling to by day.

Everywhere she turned, her mother was waiting like an open hand, catching at her lacy hem and dragging her down into the closeted heat of their house in summer. Such days all her movements were heavy, and she would lie and wait until twilight cooled the viscous air.

One such night, Cecilia opened her wrists. For a time, she floated. Then they pulled her back; into the greyness of time, the sluggishness of flesh. Yet much of her remained in the shadow, where the light was cool. The dim light called to her as a voice, whispering flight.

Loving beauty, Cecilia relaxed again into its thrall; she jumped, spinning herself like silk across the warm night. She floated; the cord snapped; she soared.

Smiling: for no reality, however cold, would bring her down again.

2. _Pretty–Lux_

When Lux was little, her mother was pretty; the steel wool hair was a bob, and more blonde than grey. There are pictures to prove it. At her wedding she looked like Mary, but there is something of Lux in her eyes.

Lux is prettier than her mother. She has absolute confidence in the shape of her nose and the ruler straight line of her teeth. She has waited all her life for everyone else to notice it. Unfortunately, the first person to do so is her mother.

She cannot grasp the depth of her mother's obsession with her purity. She pillages Lux's hidden makeup with the authority of God Almighty on her shoulder. Lux's music also collapses before her righteousness, and if her mother ever meets Tripp again she will probably smite his soul with the storm of her eyes.

Lux's mother has gone mad.

Lux's mother watches each of them jealously. She has shut the doors to ensure that chance does not steal them away; but clearly she fears they will remove themselves from her care, from the task appointed her by God Almighty.

And shouldn't she be scared?

Shouldn't she fear their hands more than their faces?

3. _Holy–Bonnie_

"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen."

She crosses herself, Bonaventure, and in the yellow light of the candle she is no longer sallow. When she is at her prayers she is rapturous, sanctified. Free.

Dutifully, she thanks God for the pious mother who raised her in the Church. Privately, she wishes her mother were in heaven, where, sainted, she would be...safe.

It is impossible to be truly holy in this house. There is no place for contemplation, not when her mother will not let her close the door to her room. Not when her mother's eyes follow her constantly, questioning her if she is too quiet, too solemn.

She prays for Cecilia. Father Mackey says that she is in heaven, but Bonnie knows this is a lie put forth to comfort her mother. Cecilia took her own life, removed herself from the possibility of grace. She is damned.

But she is free. Bonnie crosses herself hastily, knowing the thought for a sin. But like all sins, it is too tantalizing to forget immediately.

She lies in bed at night, watches the curtains flutter at the window. Goes to sleep, and dreams of heaven.

4. _Mary–Normal_

She never cared about cheerleading very much. Mary reads books, and she is just as smart as Therese, even if Therese doesn't know it. If anything, she is smarter than Therese, because she figured out early that it didn't pay to make her intelligence obvious. Not in their house.

Cheerleading was just a means to an end. Sometimes, Mary wants to stop being the exception to every rule. She has gone to Immaculate Heart since she was in kindergarten, but even though she has known her classmates forever she has never been part of their lives. Mary and her sisters live like fish in an aquarium, separated from the world around them by the invisible walls of their mother's obsessions and their father's blindness.

While she is a cheerleader, those walls become, briefly, thinner. She has a language in common with the other girls, even if it does consist of words spelled out with their arms. But one day she comes home from practice smelling like cigarette smoke, and that is the end.

"This is where you belong, anyway." Her mother bends to kiss her forehead, and Mary, looks down, pretending not to see the triumph in her mother's eyes.

5. _Therese–Older_

She hides the papers from Brown for weeks after she gets them, deflecting her parents' inquiries with shrugs and smiles.

Therese has spent the last four years working for her freedom. Her GPA, her class standing, all the awards she has won, not for their own sakes but for the right to list them on a college application—they are her ticket out.

For years, she has deferred all her hopes. Borne her mother's outrageous restrictions by telling herself that when she is older, she will be free.

Her mother finds the papers while Therese is at school. Cleaning her room, she says, though Therese keeps her room immaculate so that her mother will never have the excuse to snoop.

Her parents take her aside after dinner, and explain that Brown is too far away, too expensive. Her mother suggests St. Catherine's, the teacher's college near their school. "Your father could take you on his way to work in the morning," her mother says, smiling, because she knows she has won.

Therese goes to her room and strips her walls of her plaques and honor roll certificates, staring at the blankness. Thinks of Cecilia.

Wonders why she even bothered to try.


End file.
